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Effects of low-load operation on biomass boiler performance: combustion stability, pollutant emission, and boiler efficiency

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Abstract

In the rural areas of China, using biomass boiler as an auxiliary heat source for district heating will be a promising way. In this paper, an experimental study on the performance of a 500-kW biomass fixed bed boiler under low-load operating conditions (15% ~ 40% of nominal load) was carried out. The results showed that low-load operation had no significant influence on the steady combustion of biomass boiler. For pollutants-discharged concentration, the overall emission concentration of NOx was maintained at about 300 mg/m3, in which NO2 accounted for a relatively large proportion compared with nominal load. NO2 accounted for up to 63% of NOx at 15% of nominal load. In these cases, NO2 had a very strong correlation with CO (Spearman = 0.867). Moreover, the impact of low-load operation on boiler efficiency was studied. The results showed that the operating conditions with boiler efficiency above 50% accounted for 44%, of which the highest efficiency was 55%.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

This work was financially supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2020YFD1100302).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Environmental and Municipal Engineering, Qingdao University of Technology, Qingdao, 266033, China

    Ke Ji, Jianxiang Guo, Xuejun Bi, Zhengchang Yu, Chenggong Si, Shengjun Hou & **aolu Zhou

  2. Hebei University of Environmental Engineering, Qinhuangdao, 066102, China

    Xu Dong

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  1. Ke Ji
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Contributions

Ke Ji: writing—original draft, methodology, investigation, validation, data curation. Jianxiang Guo: conceptualization, formal analysis, supervision, writing—review and editing. Xuejun Bi: conceptualization, formal analysis, supervision, writing—review and editing. Zhengchang Yu: methodology, software. Chenggong Si: methodology, software. Shengjun Hou: formal analysis, writing—review and editing. **aolu Zhou: methodology, software. Xu Dong: writing—original draft, methodology.

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Correspondence to Jianxiang Guo.

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Ji, K., Guo, J., Bi, X. et al. Effects of low-load operation on biomass boiler performance: combustion stability, pollutant emission, and boiler efficiency. Biomass Conv. Bioref. (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13399-022-03355-7

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